The present work has its roots in the author's research into the alterations in Java's legal institutions brought about by the expansion of Dutch East India Company political dominance on the island. For the late seventeenth and entire eighteenth centuries the character of the era's source material invited the application of an approach generally at odds with the historical tradition. As a type of ‘history of the losers written by the winners’, it views the displacement of indigenous legal institutions through the eyes of the same foreigners who were responsible for that change. Although reliance on primarily Dutch sources did not distract from tracing the process of colonial takeover, it lacks the depth necessary to understand more precisely what constituted pre-colonial Javanese law and how it functioned. With few notable exceptions, the foreigners were not interested in the legal system that they were transforming through the introduction of rules and regulations more congenial to Company norms and aims.

In turning to research based on indigenous sources it became clear that the subject was considerably different from that suggested by the sporadic references to Javanese law in Company records. The problem is not so much in the quantity of sources as their quality. Unsurprisingly, subjects adequately covered in the Dutch records are those of interest to Europeans. These include price, quantity, and availability of saleable tropical commodities, methods of producing them, political conditions of the natives to be encouraged or discouraged, often by armed intervention, and the like. This means that only a small amount of information concerning the interface between the alien company and local traditions has been recorded, and that tempered by considerations of furthering the former's goals. Little of it provides the necessary information for a deeper understanding of traditional Javanese law.

The present study rests almost exclusively on Javanese language sources from the time and place under discussion, that is, as near as possible under the circumstances. Autonomous sources from the ‘Independent Kingdoms era’ are supplemented by sporadic European observations only when appropriate to the narrative. It is felt that this provides a more Asian-centric approach by recognising that the basis of Javanese law does not necessarily tally with that of Europe. As a result, addressing Euro-centric questions to the sources provokes answers that may not fit with reality. John Crawfurd's observation quoted in Chapter 1 provides a telling example.